The Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs — “That’s a good question,” Steamboat music producer Todd Leestma says, trying to buy time to arrive at a reasonable response to, “Why did you decide to record music as the Intergalactic Funk Cowboy?”

What he comes up with is surprisingly logical.

“I just needed something different to stand out, because a lot of music is just kind of bland,” he says, noting that George Clinton’s Parliament routinely took a space-age approach to establishing their mothership connection with groove.

“There are no other intergalactic funk cowboys, you know. I just try to take the lead in stepping up and funktifying the universe,” Leestma says. Admittedly, that last part is slightly more out there — but it’s not totally without reason. Someone has to step up and put funk back into the rock opera format.

Why not this guy?

In some ways, Leestma became the Intergalactic Funk Cowboy out of necessity. He makes music because that’s what he likes to do, and given the confines of his bedroom recording studio, Leestma doesn’t have room to lay down tracks with much of anyone other than himself.

So, much of his second “funk opera” is constructed with solo vocals, keyboard vamps and canned, drum machine handclaps. As the main character in a saga that pits good, booty-shaking music against the Pirate of Unfunk, Leestma takes cues from his musical heroes to craft a futuristic epic of beat.

Everywhere on “Operation Kaoss — The Pirate’s Revenge,” Leestma draws on The Who’s narrative structures, Prince’s guitar-geared swagger, Pink Floyd’s atmospheric transitions and Frank Zappa’s disregard for reality.

It’s a follow-up to Leestma’s 2002 debut quasi-opera, and it finds the Intergalactic Funk Cowboy on the losing side of a fight to save the funk. Leestma plans to record a third installment in the series this summer.

“I don’t want to give away too much, but yeah, it’s not the end of the Funk Cowboy, for sure,” he says.

Leestma didn’t plan on a trilogy. But when you’ve got a struggle as universal as the survival of music that grooves — and a sweet sequencing keyboard to chronicle the fight, the story just ends up in multiple acts.

“It just kind of worked out, you know. It’s just kind of the way the world’s been going, there’s so much division,” Leestma says. Sticking to his rock opera roots, Leestma tries not to get too overtly political with his message. He has, after all, devoted about 100 minutes of music to an ongoing battle with the Pirate of Unfunk (played here by local musician Justin Glaza).

Putting a science fiction spin on the politics of division is just safer, and it certainly lends itself better to dancing. So that’s what Leestma does.

This summer, Leestma leaves Steamboat to defend bass-heavy music in Michigan (where, apparently, that battle is necessary). But a return to Routt County is a definite possibility, and Leestma is sure he can continue to get shows here.

For now, pieces of “Operation Kaoss — The Pirate’s Revenge,” are available at www.myspace.com/funkcowboy. He plans to post the album at www.purevolume.com/intergalacticfunkcowboy soon.